Page 6 of Ringer
“Shit.” Pete pulled away, his face almost comical with panic.“Shit.”
She sat up. Her fingers turned clumsy again, stubborn with disappointment. She struggled to get her bra reclasped, and put her shirt on backward the first time. At least they were concealed behind several aisles of shelving, which, through a kaleidoscope of different supplies, gave them a patchwork view of the stairs.
Allen Fortner, a military guy her father knew fromWest Point ages ago, passed momentarily into view, and suspicion scratched at the back of Gemma’s mind. Fortner was FBI, and he and her father hadn’t seen each other in years.
So what was he doing here, at Gemma’s mom’s party?
“... wasn’t sure what side of the fence you were on,” Fortner was saying. “Trainor never thought you could be bounced this way.”
“Trainor’s an idiot,” Geoffrey said easily. They had moved out of sight, but Gemma could still hear them perfectly. “Besides, it’s not about loyalty. It’s about future growth.”
Pete made a movement as if to stand, but she grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Aren’t you worried about exposure?” Fortner asked.
“It’s my wife’s fiftieth birthday party,” he said. “You’re an old friend of the family. What’s to expose?” Then: “You didn’t think we invited you for the pig roast, did you?”
In the long pause that followed these words, all of Gemma’s earlier good feeling collapsed. She knew that this conversation, this man and her father standing between old furniture and rolls of extra toilet paper, was the true reason for everything: the skirts and the music and the honeyed ham and her mother’s happiness.
A cover.
“All right,” Fortner said at last. “Talk, then.”
Geoff’s response was immediate: “I know where they are,” he said. And then, when Fortner was silent, “The subjects. The missing ones.”
Gemma’s heart was a balloon: all at once, punctured, it collapsed.
“Christ. It’s been three weeks.”
“Your guys lost track. I didn’t.”
“We didn’t lose track,” Fortner said, and he sounded irritated for the first time. “We were dealing with containment issues. Civilians, data leaks—”
“Sure. Harliss. I know.”
Next to her, Pete shifted. His knee knocked a shelf containing dozens of bottles of water. They wobbled but didn’t fall. Gemma held her breath.
Neither Fortner nor her father seemed to notice, because Fortner went on, “You were the one to spring him.” He must have been pacing, because he passed into view again. Through the shelves packed with Christmas ornaments and old memorabilia, Gemma saw Fortner bring a hand to his jaw. It was like he was a robot with only a few preprogrammed modes. But when he spoke again, he just sounded tired. “I should’ve known.”
“That’s the problem with your end of the business, Allen. No local connections. A guy down at the precinct in Alachua County played basketball with me at West Point. It wasn’t hard.”
“Why now? Why not before?”
Again, silence. Gemma felt a finger of sweat move down her back. She was in a crouch, and her thighs were beginning to shake.
“I made a promise to my daughter,” Geoff said, and Gemma heard the words as if they had glanced off the lip of a well high above her.
Allen Fortner obviously didn’t buy it either. “Come on,” he said. “You can’t be serious.”
“I promised her I wouldn’t be the one to hand them over,” Geoff said. “And I won’t be. That’s what your people are for. And I wanted to make sure the Philadelphia team was ready. I did some digging in DC, too, felt out the lobbies. Saperstein’s done, even if he won’t admit it. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a place for the tech. I’ve spoken to Miller, and he thinks we’re ready for a big policy push.”
Pete reached for Gemma’s hand. She pulled away, balling her fists instead, squeezing until she felt pain. She couldn’t touch him. Her whole life was a lie, and it had festered and turned poisonous.
She didn’t want to infect him, too.
“What’s the end goal?” Fortner said. “Talk quickly, now. Your wife will be expecting a cake and her sing-along.”
That almost killed her, right there. She was still breathing, though. It was amazing the little deaths that she had lived through.
